14th October 2011 Archive

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Microsoft twists some pixels

Borgs another gaming studio

Microsoft has swooped up game development house Twisted Pixel, in a move to bolster its incubation team for gaming and entertainment content for Microsoft Studios. The Austin, Texas-based studio has a history with Gatesville collaboration, developing award-winning Xbox Live Arcade titles since launching in 2006, Spolsion Man has …

Business 14 Oct 00:01
Hubble snaps dark matter warping spacetime

Galactic funhouse mirror from 4.5 billion years ago

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a 19-hour snapshot of galaxies whose images have been warped by the presence of the baffling interstellar substance known as "dark matter", residing in an intervening galactic cluster. The image, released Thursday, shows the cluster – known prosaically as MACS J1206.2-0847, or simply MACS …

Space 14 Oct 00:20
IBM juices I/O and memory on entry Power Systems

And more Power7 cores for the Power 780 beast

If you are a user of an entry or somewhat biggish Power Systems server and you are memory or I/O constrained, then IBM has some new Power7 machines it wants to sell you. If not, the company is perfectly happy to sell you the existing Power7 machines, which don't support as much main memory and which only use PCI-X and PCI- …

Servers 14 Oct 00:26
So where is IBM's Power7+ CPU?

And when?

As El Reg told you earlier this week, IBM was, indeed, getting ready to enhance its Power Systems line of servers. But Big Blue did not, despite evidence to the contrary, have the Power7+ processors coming "just around the corner", as it was telling customers only a few weeks ago. IBM did, however, launch new versions of its …

Servers 14 Oct 00:28
Astronomy crowd spots PLANET KILLER!

Just kidding, folks, but still cool

Unravelling DNA, identifying exoplanets, and now, spotting near-Earth asteroids: is there anything that science can’t outsource to an Internet crowd? The European Space Agency has announced that its Space Situational Awareness program, in which amateur astronomers pitch into to help analyze sky survey photographs, has turned …

Space 14 Oct 00:30
Wannabe Obama replacement tried to hire Ballmer

Republican prez hopeful addresses Microsoft staff

Mitt Romney, one of the leading contenders for the US Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has revealed he once tried to hire Steve Ballmer. Romney made a campaign stop on Thursday in Redmond to speak to Microsoft’s Political Action Committee about his plans for the government, should he make it to the White House. …

Software 14 Oct 00:32
Financial company heavies researcher for reporting vulnerability

Sledgehammer meets walnut: shrapnel flies

An Australian security researcher has found himself questioned by police and threatened by a commercial law firm – for reporting a vulnerability to a financial company. Proving that shoot-the-messenger ham-fistedness isn’t dead, First State Super – which handles much of the superannuation of the NSW public service, among other …

Security 14 Oct 03:09
Apple versus Samsung: key points in the ruling

Cupertino only won by a nose in Oz trial

Yesterday’s (October 13) judgment granting Apple its requested injunction preventing Samsung from selling its Galaxy 10.1 fondleslab in Australia has been published. Available on Austlii here, the lengthy decision by Justice Annabelle Bennett boils down to consideration of which party would be most harmed by a decision either …

Business 14 Oct 04:11
Facebook accused of violating US wiretap law

'Like' cookies tracked users, even when logged out

A Mississippi woman has accused Facebook of violating federal wiretap statutes by tracking her internet browsing history even when she wasn't logged onto the social networking site. In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in federal court in the northern district of Mississippi, Brooke Rutledge of Lafayette County, Mississippi, also …

ID 14 Oct 05:00
Toyota Yaris 2011

Review Gadgets galore

It’s a testament to the enduring popularity of the first two incarnations of Toyota’s little Yaris that between them they lasted for 12 years before the third version rolled off the production line. But has Yaris 3.0 still got what it takes to cut the mustard in the super-competitive B segment? At first glance, there's little …

reghardware 14 Oct 06:00
WHSmith launches e-book reader rivals to Amazon Kindle

Calls on Kobo

WHSmith will next week launch against Amazon's Kindle with a pair of e-book readers of its own. The UK newsagent will begin selling the Kobo reader from the Canadian company of the same name on 17 October. Kobo has e-book stores in Canada and Australia, and the WHSmith deal will bring its 2.2m - of which 1m are freebies: out …

reghardware 14 Oct 07:33
Toshiba tears into enterprise drive space

300GB 15K small form factor spinner

Courtesy of its acquisition of Fujitsu's disk drive business, Toshiba has entered the enterprise 2.5-inch disk market with a bang: with a 300GB, 15K drive to be precise. This MK01GRRB/R series product is the second such drive available, and follows on from Seagate's Savvio 15K.3. Like the Seagate product, the Toshiba has two …

Storage 14 Oct 07:36
O2 to trial VoIP over Wi-Fi

While T-Mobile starts giving away calls to the USA

O2 has announced it is going to try some VoIP services, under the brand of O2 Connect, while in America T-Mobile has opened up its Bobsled service to compete with Google Voice. O2 Connect is just a trial run to see how the services work and how users react to them. The trial is invitation only, though those attending Wired …

Networks 14 Oct 08:03
Energy minister gives grudging nuke endorsement

Comment With friends like the minister, who needs enemies?

UK Energy Minister Chris Huhne has given a ringing endorsement of nuclear energy and lauded the potential of thorium reactor technology, in his speech to the Royal Society today. Actually, he didn't – that sentence is entirely a Johann-Hari style fictionalisation. Huhne did give a speech to the Royal Society on nuclear energy …

Government 14 Oct 08:33
Belkin Conserve

Accessory of the Week Gets you out of a green jam?

Like many folk, I tend to leave my TV, Sky box and other AV kit in their low-power standby mode when I retire to my boudoir in the evenings. However, even standby mode can consume a steady trickle of electricity, and now that the blood-sucking leeches [surely 'energy companies' - Ed] are hitting us with double-digit price …

reghardware 14 Oct 09:00
World+Dog goes bonkers for iPhone 4S

Sales well up on iPhone 4 launch, says O2

O2 has claimed it sold more iPhone 4S handsets in the first hour the gadget has been on sale than the number of iPhone 4s it shifted in 2010. The new version of the smartphone went on sale in the UK at 8am this morning to the inevitable fan fanfare despite the grumblings of many a pundit over Apple's unwillingness to launch an …

reghardware 14 Oct 09:13
Dell signals Windows 8 fondleslab range

Dell World Tech supremo drops hints, slates Android

At Dell World today Michael Dell pretty much said his company will produce a Windows 8 tablet. He said that fondleslab sales on Android had failed to take off. Talking about tablets he said: "You'll see us very much aligned around the Windows 8 introduction." He added that a range of slabs will be introduced. The …

Hardware 14 Oct 09:19
Iranian TV claims royals ordered Ofcom to ban it

Watchdog still mulling how to bitchslap bonkers Press TV

Press TV, not waiting to get its official reprimand for broadcasting a dodgy interview, has accused Ofcom of being in league with the Royal Family to get it taken off the air. The channel, which is a division of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and funded by the state of Iran, reckons it has inside knowledge that the …

Music and Media 14 Oct 09:39
Samsung, Google to out Ice Cream Sarnie next week

New Android, new smartphone

Samsung and Google have rescheduled the announcement of their latest smartphone collaboration, putting a mark in the calendars on 19 October - next Wednesday. The launch, which is expected to feature not only a new Samsung Galaxy handset but also the latest incarnation of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich - a point confirmed by …

reghardware 14 Oct 09:55
Bandwidth restrictions can affect the memory

Don’t let aging systems slow you down

Every now and again, a conversation at the pub goes somewhere interesting. One of the more junior sysadmins in our group recently took over an aging small business network. The company is absolutely dependent upon an archaic piece of software for which virtualisation was the only available route to increasing the application’s …

Enterprise Tech 14 Oct 10:00
Digital UK names date for end of analogue TV era

So long, PAL

Digital UK has warned telly viewers in Britain that they have until 24 October 2012 to ditch their analogue receivers, or equip them with a digital set-top box. One year and ten days from today, the last analogue telly transmission will be switched off, the organisation said. By then, the last remaining analogue areas, …

reghardware 14 Oct 10:20
Brit cyberwarriors, your country needs you

Spooks tap up IT security boffins to protect nation

The government is proactively addressing its failure to retain internet specialists to deal with cyber security threats, according to a document (PDF) presented to Parliament by Prime Minister David Cameron. Cameron presented the document to Parliament as the government's response to issues raised by the intelligence and …

Public Sector 14 Oct 10:21
Dropbox rival touts 50GB free cloud storage for iOS fans

More file space in cyberspace

Cloud storage provider Box.net has unveiled an unmissable offer for iOS-heads, giving users heaps of free storage - ten times the amount Apple chucks in for nowt with iCloud. Any punter with a free Box Personal account on an iOS device can opt in for 50GB of free storage to keep for eternity. Just remember to write the …

reghardware 14 Oct 10:24
Sony Ericsson stems losses with smartphone sales

Thank heavens for the Android bandwagon

Sony Ericsson had a good third quarter, turning in a respectable profit on higher-margin smartphones, but won't comment on the rumours that Sony is looking to buy out the partnership. The last three months weren't as good as the same period last year: SE only turned in a pre-tax profit of €31m (£27m) compared to €62m (£54m) in …

Business 14 Oct 10:40
Europe backs changes to FOI laws

Transparency rules to keep politicians on their toes

On Tuesday the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee voted to support minor amendments to Commission's proposals to alter existing EU regulations on public access to EU documents. Both the Commission and the Committee want to update the regulations to reflect new access requirements to documents agreed under the …

Public Sector 14 Oct 10:50
Computacenter squeezed by drop in demand

Q3 revs look droopy

Computacenter's (CC) UK biz was squeezed in calendar Q3 by falling demand for bulky professional services deals and a continued drop in product sales. Revenues fell 15 per cent to £234m for the three months ended 30 September, but at group level sales grew 5 per cent to £652m as CC's German arm and acquisitions in France …

Channel Register 14 Oct 10:59
'A prime example of our complete failure'

QuotW Plus: Finding one's love-truncheon in a hornet's nest

This was the week when Research in Motion’s BlackBerry services, including email, BBM and internet were in, and then out and in, out and shaking all about. To many readers’ horror, the London Olympics 2012 seemed likely to run on Windows Vista, and then it wasn’t and Operation Hackerazzi bagged a suspect, allowing naked …

Odds and Sods 14 Oct 11:01
BOFH: Where's my free fondleslab?

Episode 15 No one ever died from buying a ... >KZERRT!<

"Well it looks like the Company's doing well," the PFY says, handing over a glossy brochure. "Really - how do you figure?" I ask, giving the Company's annual report the once over. "The bottom line looks pretty flat as far as I can see." "I was just judging by the front cover - the limousine," the PFY says "Oh that!" I say …

BOFH 14 Oct 11:16
OMG! Berners-Lee has an iPhone

RSA Europe Anti-iTunes web daddy still hates proprietary tech

Sir Tim Berners-Lee surprised assembled hacks when he turned up to a press roundtable at the RSA conference on Thursday with an iPhone. Berners-Lee notably singled out Steve Jobs' iTunes for criticism over its use of proprietary technologies a year ago, but he was happy to use the Jesus Phone despite these reservations. The …

Security 14 Oct 11:29
Texan lone star Dell lassoes storage into servers

Dell World Directly feeding CPUs with data ASAP

Texans have a certain swagger, and today in the Austin Convention Centre it was Dell's turn to sashay onto the stage. EMC World, Symantec Vision, Dell World, NetApp Insight - the single-vendor trade shows give corporates a catwalk on which to strut their stuff, and Michael Dell strode out to walk the walk and talk the talk as …

Storage 14 Oct 11:44
Collapsing cranes and cantankerous cars

WSC Another day at the solar races

It's all go here Down Under at the World Solar Challenge, as the rival teams prepare their vehicles to depart Darwin on Sunday, with nothing more than a quick 3,000km drive between them and the finishing line in Adelaide. Our on-the-spot Special Projects Bureau team caught up with a few of the participants yesterday, and this …

SPB 14 Oct 12:00
Norton blocks Facebook as 'phishing site'

Well, it does collect private info

Symantec has withdrawn an update to its Norton consumer security software that branded Facebook a phishing site on Wednesday. The snafu meant that users of Norton Internet Security were blocked from accessing the social networking site and were told a "fraudulent web page" had been blocked, as illustrated in a discussion …

Security 14 Oct 12:15
Apple's US bid to ban Samsung tabs hinges on design

Samsung's lawyer couldn't tell Galaxy and iPad apart

A US judge has said that she won't ban Samsung tablets on functionality, but might still do so based on design, and that Cupertino has yet to demonstrate those patents are valid. The comments were made by Judge Lucy Koh, who isn't deciding if there is genuine infringement – that will take a lot longer – but the judge will soon …

Networks 14 Oct 12:45
Thai floods threaten Seagate hard drive supply chain

Disties stockpile as factories go under water

Seagate is assessing the potential impact of flooding in Thailand on the production of hard disks that forced arch rival WD to temporarily halt manufacturing this week. Severe flooding has reportedly killed at least 280 people, inundated homes, disrupted transport links and caused chaos at utilities close to WD's facility, …

Storage 14 Oct 12:51
Big biz told to reveal hack attacks

Investors need to know about compromises, says SEC

Publicly listed companies in the US have been asked to disclose when they've been hacked, according to new guidance issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The market regulator has let firms know that they can no longer hide cyber attacks if that attack could cause financial damage to the company or make the …

Security 14 Oct 13:00
Forza 4

Review Petrolheadonism

Driving simulators - you either get them or you don't. For those of you who can't tell your carburettors from your crankshafts, there's perhaps little chance that anything written here will convince you to invest. Shame, because Forza 4 is perhaps the most accessible driving sim yet designed. It has the depth demanded by the …

reghardware 14 Oct 13:02
Ubuntu's Oneiric Ocelot: Nice, but necessary?

Review Behind Unity's polish

Oneiric Ocelot, or Ubuntu 11.10 as it is known, has been delivered and refines the core of the Unity environment Canonical built at the expense of GNOME. If you made the leap to Canonical's signature Unity Desktop when it arrived in Spring's Natty Narwhal edition of Ubuntu, version number 11.04, then October's update will be …

Software 14 Oct 13:29
If the name’s not on the whitelist it can’t come in

Keep the riffraff out of your systems

The poor old corporate endpoint has had a bit of a battering in the last few years. Malware is more widespread and complex than ever and it is easy to get infected simply by visiting legitimate sites that have been hacked. Now that the internet has become such a dangerous neighbourhood, are malware blacklists enough to keep …

Compliance 14 Oct 14:10
Punters to favour Smart TV over 3D TV

Big growth for app-running tellies forecast

Telly buyers are keener on Smart TV tech than they are on 3D, but both features are going to be taken up more enthusiastically than televisions in general over the next three years. So says market watcher the Topology Research Institute, which reckons 52.9m Smart TVs - televisions with internet access for IPTV services and the …

reghardware 14 Oct 14:23
Huawei 'taps up' firms to form Euro operation

Also entry to the USA rumoured

We hear that there are ongoing three-way talks between Sitronics (part of Sistema Holdings), Huawei and Intracom Telecom (part of Intracom Holdings). Intracom Telecom has alliances and contracts with, among others, Ericsson, IBM and some large telecom companies. These would be Huawei's competitors. Intracom possesses factories …

Channel Register 14 Oct 14:29
Hadoop: A Linux even Microsoft likes

Open... and Shut Big Data brings people together

There was a time when Microsoft despised open source, because open source essentially meant "Linux," and Linux was a serious threat to Microsoft's operating system business. While that threat remains, open source has become such a big tent that Microsoft increasingly feels at home with a broad array of open-source projects. …

Software 14 Oct 15:02
Dutch court rejects Samsung iPhone ban bid

Apple should get fair access to 3G tech

The Dutch court has chucked out Samsung's request that various iDevices be banned from sale in the Netherlands. The South Korean giant claimed that iPhones and iPads that incorporate 3G infringe upon patents it holds governing the implementation of that technology. As such, its lawyers argued, that Apple kit should not be …

reghardware 14 Oct 15:05
Top Tory 'lost voters' personal info' days before ID fraud week

Watchdog probes claims of papers binned in park

Just days before the start of National Identity Fraud Prevention Week on Monday, the Prime Minister's chief policy advisor Oliver Letwin has been snapped binning what appear to be documents containing personal information in a public park. The discarded documents are said to include the addresses of Letwin's constituents in …

Government 14 Oct 15:29
Samsung takes another hit in patent punch-up

Korean firm loses bid to ban Apple products in the Netherlands

In the third blow against Samsung this week, a Dutch court has turned down its application for an injunction against Apple's products on the basis of 3G patents. The case, one of the many in the Apple v Samsung patent debacle, was potentially shaky, given that 3G is a standard and therefore the patents involved in it are …

Law 14 Oct 15:55
Sixth of Britain's cellphones have traces of poo on them

Playing Angry Birds on the loo: There are consequences

One in every six mobiles in the UK has got traces of poo on it, according to a new study. Scientists from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Queen Mary, University of London, found that mobes were typically contaminated with faecal matter because people still didn't wash their hands properly with soap …

Biology 14 Oct 16:01
Winning new UK pylon design may never be used

Eco Strategy Boutique Thanks anyway, have £5k for your trouble

A Danish company has won a competition to design a new electricity pylon for the UK. The Department of Energy and Climate Change announced the winner, Bystrup, today. The winner will trouser £5,000 in prize money for its 'T-Pylon' design, but there's no commitment that it will be scarring the countryside any time soon. …

Telecoms 14 Oct 16:29
Intel mad for power, but stacked-up dies keep MELTING!

ERIC Moore's Law good for 10 years easy - top Chipzilla boffin

Moore's Law is going to be good for at least another decade, according to chip-maker Intel. "There's always physical limits to everything," Steve Pawlowski, senior fellow and head honcho on exascale research, told The Register at the European Research and Innovation Conference in Ireland. "But you can always come up with …

Storage 14 Oct 17:01
Big data centers spending big bucks on big hardware

No recession in the glass house

Just like the rich keep getting richer, the biggest data centers in the world keep getting bigger. And they're spending more money on servers, storage, and networking. According to projections put together by the box-counters and prognosticators at Gartner, in 2010 about 2 per cent of data centers worldwide comprised 52 per …

Cloud 14 Oct 17:25
Drone nerve centre malware was Mafia Wars' infostealer

Don't panic - it was only the weapons and spy systems infected

More details have emerged on how systems ground systems that control US military drones came to be infected by malware. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the US Air Force said that "standalone systems on Creech Air Force Base, Nevada" had been infected with malware. "Credential stealing" software was discovered in September …

Malware 14 Oct 17:29
Mass ASP.NET attack causes websites to turn on visitors

614,000 pages so far in ongoing epidemic

An infection that causes poorly configured websites to silently bombard visitors with malware attacks has hit almost 614,000 webpages, Google searches show. The mass infection, which redirects users to a site exploiting old versions of Oracle's Java, Adobe's Flash player and various browsers, was first disclosed by researchers …

Malware 14 Oct 19:24
Google takes buzz saw to Buzz, other appendages

Management machete hacks off more chunks

Google's first stab at social networking, the failed Google Buzz, is just one of a group of projects and programs that Mountain View has cast off in a "fall sweep", the sequal to its "fall spring-clean" of last month. "Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past," wrote Google VP for products …

Music and Media 14 Oct 19:33
It's official: Microsoft, Skype marriage consummated

Skype chief praises new master's 'disruptive innovation'

Microsoft is wrapping up the last regulatory approvals, and has formally added Skype as a new division within the company, closing the deal that cost Redmond $8.5bn. The last regulatory hurdles to the deal cleared in Europe last week (the US okayed the deal in June) and Redmond has already trimmed a layer of senior management …

Software 14 Oct 19:40
Apache insists OpenOffice is alive, well, and flush

Keep calm and carry on

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has sought to downplay fears over the future of OpenOffice, following a rather dramatic statement from original members of the team, begging for donations. Shane Curcuru, one of the mentors on the Apache OpenOffice podling, told The Register that the ASF was continuing development of the …

Applications 14 Oct 22:51
Apple, tech titans lead US brands to world domination

Chin up, Blighty – you're strong in booze

The European Brand Institute's annual brand-value survey is out, and Europe has little to boast about: not one European brand made it into the top ten. In fact, each of the world's ten most valuable brands identified by the Eurobrand2011 survey are from the good ol' US of A, with Apple standing on top of the pack. Four of the …

Business 14 Oct 23:23